53 Letters For My Lover (17 page)

I smile at the photo. It’s typical Jayne, standing out in the middle of a dance floor full of other couples. And then I see him, a few feet to the left—the casual, messy way he wears a suit, the turn of his profile...

“What’s wrong?” asks Jayne.

“Nothing.” I hand her back the paper, trying to erase the image of Troy with a tall woman in a bare-backed gown, his arms around her waist, his lips locked in a passionate kiss. A thousand black and white pixels come flying out of the page and attack me like raw edged shrapnel.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes.” I collect my defenses. “I’m fine.”

“All right then.” Jayne looks me over. “I wish you’d come. We had a wonderful time.”

I picture Troy skiing down the mountain, heading for the chalet after wards, the fire roaring, warm and toasty. Him and Ellen’s friend. A wonderful time.

“I’m sorry. I have to get going.” I pay for my half. “I just remembered I have an appointment.” I leave a bewildered Jayne, sitting alone with her half-eaten lunch special.

Listen, I have to go...

The words echo in my mind. The muffled talking, how happy he sounded. It wasn’t because of me or my call.

Silly, silly, silly Shayda.

He had to get back. To his date.

I drive downtown and park outside the building Bob showed me after closing Troy’s commercial deal.

‘Heathgate Group.’ I follow the dots next to the listing...Suite 910.

The desks are empty. I make my way through the sawdust, the haphazard electrical wires, the drilling, the clanging, and then, more chaos—Troy, behind a glass wall, shooting hoops in his corner office. Who has a basketball net installed at work? How did I allow myself to get involved with a man who thinks the whole world is his playground?

I don’t knock. I walk straight in.

“Shayda.” His face lights up. Then he frowns. “What’s wrong?”

“I just want to return this.” I put the cell phone on his desk and turn on my heel, but he stops me in one swift move.

“What’s this about?”

“You want to know what it’s about?” My voice quivers. I walk over to his desk and unfold the newspaper. “This.” I point to the photo. “This is what it’s about, Troy.”

“This?” He casts a cursory glance at the image. “You’re worked up over this?”

But it’s not just this. It’s the things he doesn’t see, the ghosts of my father and brother in that photo, staring back at me. Men who can never limit themselves to just one woman.

“I’m done, Troy. It’s over.”

I head for the door, but he grips my wrist and swings me around.

“Really? Just like that? Because you see me with another woman?” He tangles his fist in my hair and pulls my head back. “Do you think it’s easy for
me
? To think about you lying in bed with another man, night after night?”

“He’s not another man. He’s my husband!”

“That’s just it, Shayda! He’s your husband. I can’t compete. I can’t demand. I can’t win!” His breath is hot and harsh against my ear.

“Stop it, Troy. You’re hurting me.”

But he twists my hair tighter. “You think I
like
waiting on the fringes of your life, wondering when I’ll see you? Maybe Christmas? Maybe New Year’s? And when I do, you walk in here and throw
this
in my face?”

“You don’t know anything.” I spit out.

“No? Then tell me, Shayda. Do you make the same sweet sounds for him? Does the rose scent of your skin drive him fucking crazy? Do you soak your panties for him like you do for me? Tell me, Shayda. Godammit!”

It’s not like that, I want to say. But I say nothing. Because that would open up secrets that are not mine to tell. And isn’t it enough that I have already betrayed Hafez?

So I let him swallow the jagged pill, I let him wash it down with the bitter concoction of me in my husband’s arms, sharing all the things that I share with him.

“I’ll take you any way I can, Shayda,” he says. “But everything else is off limits. You don’t get to be married and keep me on a leash. And if you can’t handle that, if you can’t handle
this,
” he waves the paper at me, “then we end it. Right here, right now.”

Yes. That’s what I came to do. End it. Ignore the sharp pain stabbing at my insides and hack away in spite of it.

So many chances to walk away, so many reasons, but they fall like dominoes around me, one by one, until I am standing in a circle without sense, with my cheating heart and my cheating soul. I bow my head; my shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Then leave him,” he says.

“I can’t. I can’t just
leave
him. He needs me.”

Troy’s jaw clenches. “You can’t leave him. You can’t leave me. You can’t handle the in-between. What do you
want
, Shayda?”

They tell you that an affair destroys everything, that there are no winners, that there is only heartbreak. I know this. And still I do it. Still I take his face in my hands and kiss him until he returns my fierce, desperate kisses with a fervor that pushes everything else aside.

“I’ll learn to deal with it.” I pick up the paper and throw it in the trash.

We cling to each other, trying to keep it down, this cocktail of raging, tangled emotions. I know it’ll be like this every time I see him with someone else, like taking great, big nauseating gulps of poison, but I do it anyways.

I open the door and let it all in.

January 10th, 1996

“What’s going on in
there?” Troy sounds amused, like he’s ready to barge through the bathroom door.

“Just a minute!” I reply, struggling with the garters on the sexy black number I picked up. The silk stockings go on easy enough, but these attachments...ugh.

Next time practice, genius
. I make a mental note.

A few more tries and I give up. Good thing the stockings have a stay-up top. I draw a cat’s eye with black liquid liner and add a smudge of gloss to my lips. Then I slip into red patent stilettos.

Sex in a shoe box, that’s what the sales lady said.

How odd they looked in my closet, next to the line-up of plain, sensible flats. Like great, big exclamation points in the middle of a mundane sentence.

I check my reflection. Someone else stares back at me—bigger, taller, sexier. Someone so selfish, I have to look away. I take a deep breath and step out.

He’s not hovering outside the door. What was I thinking? Troy doesn’t hover. He expands, he occupies, he fills the space. And so, sitting on the bed, shirt off, laptop on, nothing but boxers and bare, smooth skin, he hits me with that rough, tender mix of masculinity even before he looks up. And then he does...

I love the way his mouth just hangs open. His eyes roam the length of my body. This is what great masterpieces must feel like on museum walls—like sighing, like climbing out of their rigidly stretched frames, and falling, boneless, into a lover’s glance.

“Come here,” he says.

I take a step forward. Six inch heels are not my friend. My arms flail out, grabbing the door frame.

The great works of art tut-tut their disapproval.

“On second thought, stay right there.” He gets out of bed.

Six inch heels and Troy Heathgate. Not a good combination for the knees.

The heels bring me almost eye to eye with him. When I look at the sky, I will think of it like this—on fire, with crackling clouds of desire.

He angles his head and leans in, his lips are almost touching mine. He looks at me like that until I gasp, until I’ve seen all the things we’re going to do, all the things that have already come alive, in the private corners of his mind.

He strokes my face and lets one finger linger under my chin, guiding me to him in a whisper soft kiss. He pulls away far too soon and stands back, teasing me, goading me.

I grab his bottom lip and suck on it greedily. Then I let go, catching it between my teeth before letting it slide out. He groans and pulls me hard against the muscled contours of his legs. My knees buckle, but he’s already lifting me off my feet, one hand cupping my bottom, the other guiding my legs around his hips.

He pushes me against the wall, hard, and rocks against me, letting me feel every steel boned inch of him. I need his lips so bad, but he won’t let me have them, just this mad, grinding dance. I grab on to his shoulders, feeling myself burn from the inside out.

“Please,” I plead.

“Please what?”

I don’t know what, so I rub my nose on his neck—my lips, my cheeks, my forehead. But it’s not enough. I squirm against him, arching against his hips in slow, rotating circles. I feel the short, shallow rush of his breath as he tears my face away from his neck with a triumphant gleam.

Then he kisses me. The kiss I’ve been waiting for, mastering my mouth even as he carries me to bed.

“You have no idea how incredibly sexy you look,” he growls, placing me on the sheets.

He kneels between my legs and kisses the inside of my ankle, resting my sharp, pointy heels against his chest. His hands caress my skin, down to the back of my knees, thumbs moving back and forth over the soft, sensitive spot. My shoes dig deeper, leaving little round dents on his skin.

“Planning on driving these straight through my heart, aren’t you?” He slides his fingers under the arch of my foot and removes one red stiletto.

“You know...” He toys with the other one, clearly enamored. “Much as I adore these, I’d rather you skip them. I want to be the only thing that makes you all wobbly and weak-kneed.”

The second shoe hits the floor.

His lips run down the sole of my foot through a fine layer of seamed silk. I shudder as his tongue darts over my toes, touching but not touching.

“Should we take these off?” His fingers splay over my stockings. “Hmmm?” He hums along the length of my leg until he gets to the band on my upper thigh. “Yes?” He starts peeling it off. “And this one too.” But he holds on to the second stocking, winding it around his hand.

“Close your eyes, Shayda.”

“What?”

“Close. Your. Eyes.” He waits until they’re shut and then blindfolds me with the silk stocking, tying a soft knot in the back.

“Now show me what you do.”

“I...”

“Yes you can,” he whispers. Soft kisses cover my eyes, my forehead, the corners of my mouth. “Yes you can.”

With my eyes closed, all I can do is listen. And feel. The strength of his arms, the heart in his words. He’s got me. And there’s nothing I can’t share here, in the circle of his embrace.

Still I hesitate, trembling like the last leaves of winter, until he starts whispering in my ear, words that make me twist and turn and fly with the wind.

I turn to my side, crossing my legs at the thighs and then again at the ankles, hooking one foot around, squeezing, undulating, letting his voice paint hot, erotic worlds in dizzy, rushing strokes. He spoons me, sliding one hand between my legs, feeling every movement I make without stopping the sensual string of sentences.

I push deeper into him. His thighs cradle the curve of my bottom. I feel him against me, excited, aroused, even as I start to lose control. His palm encircles my neck from behind and he tilts my head back, kissing me on the forehead. A sweet cord of tension snaps inside me. Ripples of mindless ecstasy flood through me. He holds on to me until he feels the tremors pass, until my body goes limp. Then he moves, letting me roll onto my back.

“Wow. You just squeeze your thighs?” He pushes the blindfold aside.

I cover my face with my hands as the reality of what I just did sinks in.

“Shayda.” He nudges my palms aside with his face, his nose rubbing against mine. “Look at me.”

I open my eyes.

“How did you learn to do that?”

“I don’t know. By accident. I was pretty young. My parents were fighting at the dinner table. I was clenching my thighs, rocking back and forth on the chair. It was a coping mechanism I used all the time, but that day...it just happened.”

“So you got off, for the first time, in front of your parents?”

“I never quite thought of it like that.”

“Sneaky Beetroot.” He laughs. “I love it. And I love that you shared it with me. God, that was such a turn on.” His kiss chases away the last of my embarrassment. “And now, there’s this rather...um...pressing matter at hand.” He gives me a wicked smile.

“There is? I’m afraid I have to get going.”

“Oh, you better get going all right.” He takes my hand and guides it to his boxers.

“Troy?”

“Hmmm?”

“Does it bother you that we don’t have sex?”

“We don’t?” He closes his eyes as my hand slides over him. “Because it’s always frigging awesome.”

“Answer the question.” I rake my nails down his thigh.

“Look at you. Digging your heels into my chest, scraping my skin off with your talons. What kind of beast have I unleashed?” He flips me over, letting me feel the hard, pulsating core of him. “Do you want to?”

“Do you?” I ask, thinking how magnificent he looks when he’s turned on.

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Are you afraid I’ll fight you off again?”

He traces the line of my collarbone before his thumb circles my nipple. “I’m just breaking you in slowly.”